


He Tried

by antikytheranComplicator



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, F/M, Fluff, HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALEX, Humanstuck, jade lived on her island but then moved in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 14:42:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8106301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antikytheranComplicator/pseuds/antikytheranComplicator
Summary: "Do or do not, there is no try." - Tupac ShakurYou are almost certain Tupac said that.





	

He always tried his best to impress her.

He never thought he’d be envious of John’s all-out displays of romantic affection, until he finally realized that there was someone he wanted to do that for.

And so he started trying.

He tried dog-sitting for her one weekend while she was out of town. (Her giant white monster somehow managed to break into the fridge. This was a terrible idea.)

He tried proving to her that he, too, was smart by partnering with her in a frog dissection lab in biology class. (It smelled like shit and… was that a cricket in its stomach? At least she never found about the barfing. This was a terrible idea.)

He tried taking up her on one of her many offers to go on a walk in the park together. Getting out into nature and all that shit. (She ended up leading him on a walk that lasted five miles. That wasn’t exactly a walk in the park. Whoever wrote that song about walking five hundred miles to meet a girl clearly had no idea what they were talking about. This was a terrible idea.)

He tried pouring his soul into some collaborative remixes on FreshJamz one late night with her, and she said that she absolutely loved them. (But that wasn’t enough. He knew he didn’t really impress her, the way he wanted to, and even doing the things they both loved couldn’t pull it off. This was the most terrible idea of all.)

That’s when he stopped trying, and started remembering.

He remembered how she used to talk all the time about her life back on the island where she grew up.

He remembered just listening to her long, winding stories about the island she grew up on, mostly spoken with the strange kind of nostalgia you get for something bad, but occasionally mixed with a tinge of genuine loss.

He remembered how that happened the most when she talked about the stars.

The starlight, so from civilization, was so bright that she could read a book to it if she tried. She would turn all the lights in her house off and spend a night staring deeply into the universe, waiting for it to stare back into her.

And so he tried asking her to go on a drive with him.

They set out on their journey in the evening, spending a couple hours laughing and spinning stories on the increasingly abandoned back country roads, talking about the time he felt guilty for almost laughing when John accidentally fell down the stairs, or how she nearly set Rose’s dress on fire in a chemistry class accident.

When they arrived at their destination: an unremarkably empty abandoned field, he set out a ratty old picnic blanket. For once, he said nothing, and just sat down on the blanket with her and pointed her towards the stars.

She spent a while explaining to him the intricacies of each and every constellation, of course, but after that they went back to her old routine of just staring at the stars for a while.

She tried, but even all these years later, Jade was never able to the stars to stare back at her.

Instead, she turned towards Dave, and let him stare back into her instead.

She never imagined that her replacement for the stars would also try to kiss her, but she was more than happy to return the favor.


End file.
